A Pneumatic Multi-Dome Active Energy Harvesting System Available to Purchase

When traveling through heavy traffic, vehicles lose a large amount of their kinetic energy. These losses can be attributed to various sources such as the roll friction of the tires against the road pavement. According to the Federal Highway Administration, there are an average of 304,000 cars a day travelling on the US-75 near the Dallas Fort Worth Arlington area in Texas. With so much available energy being wasted, it is essential to find a different way to harness losses so that they can be recycled. The purpose of this research project is to design a system that will harvest some of this lost energy using a set of pneumatic cylinders built into the road. The cylinders will have a dome shape that extends slightly above the surface of the road. As cars pass over this dome the cylinder will retract and compressed air will be sent through a pneumatic system, to an air tank where it is stored. The energy generated by the air stored in the cylinder can be used to drive a pneumatic motor that can turn a generator. The generator could then be used for multiple purposes such as: charge a battery, power a toll booth or other near highway structures. The compressed air stored in the tank may be used for other applications. This is useful due to the fact that almost every industry from the medical industry to the food industry use compressed air to power their pneumatic tools. The pneumatic cylinder will be used in areas of high traffic such as when a car approaches a toll booth, or entrances and exits of multi-level parking garages. The pneumatic cylinder and the associated air flow system using a CAD and a pneumatic software. The behavior of the system could then be tested and be better understood. After the initial simulation testing, a physical prototype has been built in order to gather practical data that can be compared to the simulations. Based on the gathered data on the prototype an assembly of numerous road rumbles can be built and tested on real streets. It is expected that a high pressure will be built in the tank using the prototype. Once pressure is built in the system data will be generated using various instruments, which will show pressure versus time, and pressure versus number of strokes so that the system can be better understood during the testing period. This data will then be used to determine the efficiency, and viability of the proposed system in generating compressed air as a form energy.